When Brian McLaren writes stuff like this and this, I wonder if he realizes that he’s doing exactly what guys like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were doing nearly 30 years ago.

I think that Christians in positions of prominence, like McLaren, ought to be very hesitant to support political candidates. I think this should apply to Republican candidates as well as Democratic candidates.

One of the reasons our country has found itself in the right-vs-left mentality that has dominated the political conversation for so much of the last generation is because Christians have allowed themselves to be seduced into the practice of attaching their names, churches, ministries, radio programs, publishing houses, etc. to political candidates. Instead, Christian leaders should support ideas that reflect the ideas that advance the Kingdom of God, not the candidacy of Bush, McCain, Clinton, or Obama.

Imagine what it would look like if guys like McLaren, Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, and Tony Campolo on the left got together with Jim Dobson, Pat Robertson, Richard Land, and Chuck Colson on the right and listened to each other, prayed with each other, studied the Bible together, and put together an agenda that advanced the things that Jesus cares about. Rather than worrying about conservative or liberal ideology, what if Christians got together and said, we need to talk about ways that the government and the church can co-exist in this world and take care of people as Jesus would?

Could you imagine what this conversation would sound like on issues like abortion? Maybe we could get beyond the pro-life vs. pro-choice nonsense and actually talk about caring for pregnant mothers with unwanted pregnancies. Maybe we could talk about ways to help those women and their families in ways that have nothing to do with Roe v. Wade.

Could you imagine what this conversation would sound like on the environment? Maybe we could start to talk about caring for God’s creation. Maybe we could talk about stewardship and conservation in ways that don’t demonize people or institutions needlessly. Maybe we could talk about ways of showing our love for God spill over into a love for the earth.

Could you imagine what this conversation would sound like on poverty, race, national security, marriage, justice, opportunity, taxes?

But I don’t think we’ll ever get there. Instead, Brian McLaren (and plenty of stupid people on the right, as well) will perpetuate the us-vs-them, right-vs-left stereotypes that ultimately will never lead to solutions.

An interesting perspective on Sarah Palin, from the former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell:

Mark DeMoss, former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell and now a leading Christian public relations executive, is hoping that Palin turns out well but has been shocked and worried by the reflexive Christian embrace of her.

“Too many evangelicals and religious conservative are too preoccupied with values and faith and pay no attention to competence. We don’t apply this approach to anything else in life, including choosing a pastor.” Imagine, he said, if a church was searching for a pastor and the leadership was brought a candidate with great values but little experience. “They’ve been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn’t happen! We don’t say, ‘He shares our values, so let’s hire him.’ That’s absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.”

There’s been a lot of vitriol spewed by certain segments of the media during the last week in regards to Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy. Much of it has been completely ridiculous.

Setting the politics aside, I find Dan Kimball’s observation the most intriguing so far:

It is dawning on me however, as I have been reading some blogs and hearing which Christian leaders are excited about her - that many of them are from complementarian churches. Which means as they are enthusiastic about her becoming vice president and making incredibly important decisions for our country for both men and women and make speeches and lead - she couldn’t teach the pulpit, or be an elder or pastor in their church and make decisions or lead men and women in a church setting.

How about that? The theology of the Palin pick is something that I have yet to see fleshed out, but I think this is a great place to start.

UPDATE: So I saw this interview with Richard Land on CT’s website. Here’s his take:

The only restrictions we find in Scripture are, that for whatever reason women are not to be in charge of a marriage and women are not to be in charge of a church. That has nothing to do with governor, or senator or the House of Representatives, or president, or vice president.

And now the mainstream press is catching on.

I think it’s curious that so many people have been comparing and contrasting Sarah Palin with Barack Obama in the last few weeks. In some ways, they are quite comparable. In other ways, they are a study in contrasts.

I’m a little befuddled by assertions like this, though, from Publius:

She may be a dud, or she may be the next Abraham Lincoln. The point is that no one knows.

What’s troubling then is not so much her, but the way in which both the conservative base and apparently a decent chunk of swing voters have embraced her on the basis of essentially nothing but media images and prepared speeches. It’s surface politics gone wild.

99.9% of the American public has known Palin for approximately two weeks. Her great moment was a prepared speech written by someone else. Even though people know very little about her, that’s not stopping them from projecting their own policy preferences upon her.

But people know PLENTY about her. Within two weeks, we’ve learned all about her, her family, her upbringing, her church, and just about anything else you could think of. Oh, and because she’s an elected official, she’s got a record of accomplishments, both good and bad. In fact, there might not be a more thoroughly vetted candidate in American politics at this point.

Publius goes on to compare Palin’s ascent to Obama’s:

Obama isn’t the nominee because of that speech. He’s the nominee because he was tested over the course of a grueling 2 year campaign that took out the Clinton political team. He’s also been a Senator in that time, and has showed an almost eerily efficient managerial competence under extremely high stress.

This is just absurd. Obama is the crown prince of surface politics. He’s never had to run in a competitive election in his brief political career. He was a virtual unknown in the Illinois legislature (where he voted “present” nearly 130 times) until he ran for Senate in 2004. That campaign featured the good fortune of multiple opponents suffering both critical and mortal political wounds that paved the way for Obama’s quick ascension to the US Senate.

Once in the Senate, Obama declared he would not run for the White House. Then, he changed his mind after barely settling into his new digs. During the brief time he was actually representing the people of Illinois in the US Senate, his leadership was so unremarkable, that Gov. Palin was able to get away with claiming that he had not authored any substantive legislation. Now, technically she’s incorrect, but can anybody name the legislation that Obama has authored?

Meanwhile, during the “grueling” two-year campaign that Obama has been so efficiently waging, he’s done very little to make his position on just about any issue clear.

First, he was against the troop surge in Iraq. But now, he claims it has been wildly successful. But he still would not have voted for it if he could do it over again.

Then, he was all about raising taxes …  Oh, but now he’s re-thinking that position, because, well, raising taxes during a recession is a stupid idea.

And after Mr. Bipartisan has made several flippant remarks about abortion, most recently at the Sabbleback forum, he’s now trying to clean up after himself, even though he has one of the most liberal pro-choice voting records in Washington.

Nearly all of Obama’s success has come from the fact that he’s been treated like a celebrity from the day he began his campaign. At no point has Obama’s stance on any issue become the focal point of his campaign. In fact, Obama continues to dodge and weave on issues, trying to find nuance and parsing language to appeal to as many as possible.

Say what you will about Palin, but let’s not pretend Obama has not enjoyed much of the same media adulation, resulting in the same kind of 25 feet wide, 2 inches deep kind of candidacy. The difference? Palin’s been on the ticket for 2 weeks. Obama’s been campaigning for 2 years.

Obama: “I’ve got two daughters … [and] if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Palin: “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.”

In 2000, the Democratic Party platform included a plank that read, “Our goal is to make abortion less necessary and more rare …” [PDF]

In 2004, the only reference to abortion in the party platform is this: “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” [PDF]

In 2008, the platform looks like this: [PDF]

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all
efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed
choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for
abortions.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

The word “rare” has disappeared from the platform. Instead, there’s a paragraph that links “affordable family planning services” and “age-appropriate sex education” with the ability to reduce the number of unwanted pregancies and the need for abortions.

So is the goal of the Democratic Party to actually reduce the number of abortions to achieve “rarity”? Or is it simply to contintue to fund so-called “family planning services”? I guess Planned Parenthood falls under that heading. That would be Planned Parenthood, who recorded record revenue of $1.018 billion in FY2006 [PDF]. Roughly a third of that revenue came from government contracts and grants. In that year, they performed 289,750 abortions, up from 264,963 the previous year. The number of “adoption referrals”? 2410.

According to the Democrats platform, more family planning means fewer unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer abortions, right? Ummm … the data doesn’t seem to support that. Planned Parenthood is well-funded, and by all accounts, performing all kinds of family planning services. But the number of abortions they are performing is actually increasing. Now, the overall number of abortions nationwide has been on the decline in recent years, but there is nothing to suggest that there is a connection between the funding of family planning or sex ed and this decline.

And what’s Barack Obama’s plan to reduce the number of abortions?

I have to admit that I was hoping for a McCain-Romney ticket. But after watching the Democratic National Convention, I’ve become convinced that the Democrats have become the party of style over substance. Even with all the faux unity that Hillary oozed, it’s clear that the Democrats are a party on the verge of crisis.

The word I got from Denver was that the appearance of unity is masking a lot of discontent about the disenfranchising of Hillary supporters by her exclusion from the ticket. There are a lot of 35-64 women who find an Obama-Biden ticket a little nauseating.

So when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his VP pick, I was initially skeptical. The Obama campaign seized on some of the obvious deficiences of Gov. Palin — too inexperienced, being the main critique. Now, I find this criticism pretty ironic, coming from Sen. Obama, who has spent most of his Senate career running for the White House. Obama has no executive experience. None. Zero. And he’s running for the highest office in the land. And he’s critical of Gov. Palin’s lack of experience?

Even worse, if this statement from the Obama campaign:

“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,”

Again, Obama’s campaign belittles and marginalizes small-town America as being irrelevant and out-of-touch. That’s not going to play well in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia.

And as this comparison should remind us, Palin is more qualified for the job Obama is running for than he is.

The other major criticism from the Obama campaign has been Palin’s staunch pro-life stance. Unfortunately for Sen. Obama, who lacked the strength of conviction to walk out of Jeremiah Wright’s church, Gov. Palin has lived out her convictions.

In December, her doctor told her that prenatal tests indicated the child she was expecting in May would be born with Down syndrome, a genetic condition that stems from an extra chromosome and that impedes a child’s physical, intellectual and language development.

Only one year into her governorship and with four children at home already, a child with Down syndrome would present serious challenges. Studies in the late 90s showed that more than 80 percent of prenatal Down syndrome diagnoses end in abortion.

Ending the pregnancy, however, was never an option for the Palins. On April 18, Sarah Palin gave birth to a 6-pound, 2-ounce son, Trig Paxson Van Palin.

“We’ve both been very vocal about being pro-life,” Palin told the Associated Press, speaking of herself and her husband, Todd. “We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential.”

The day after the birth, the Palins released the following statement: “Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

And the kinds of attacks found here are disgusting and hardly reflect the kind of campaign that Sen. Obama claims to be running. It smacks of desperation. When you have to gin up this kind of stuff to make inroads, then your candidate is in big trouble.

I like the prospects of Joe Biden losing his mind in a debate with Palin and jumping all over her. If that’s the case, then you can kiss suburban soccer moms goodbye.

Zogby has the race essentially tied, after the DNC and the Palin announcement. Not the kind of bounce that Obama was expecting. Gallup has Obama ahead by 6. CNN has the race virtually tied.

You’ve got to figure that with the GOP about to hold a scaled-down convention that may ultimately minimize their risk to exposure (no Bush, no Cheney, no Schwarzenegger), we may enter the home stretch of this campaign with McCain/Palin in the driver’s seat with Obama/BIden playing catch-up. After all, Obama has played all his cards, in front of 85,000 people in Denver. What’s he got left? Meanwhile, the slow boil of McCain/Palin may simmer along until November quite nicely.

This ad is sponsored by a group called the Matthew25 Network. Here is their mission statement:

The Matthew 25 Network is a community of Christians - Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical - inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable.

The election of our public officials, and the politics they stand for, are a reflection of our core values. We believe that those elected to public office carry an important trust, as their decisions have a profound impact on our nation and our world.

We believe that people of faith should actively participate in the political process as an important avenue for social change. We are called by our faith to engage in the world as it is, while we seek after and hope for God’s Kingdom.

Therefore, while no elected official will be without flaw, we come together as individuals to support candidates for public office who share the values of the Matthew 25 Network: promoting life with dignity, caring for the least of these, strengthening and supporting families, stewardship of God’s Creation, working for peace and justice at home and abroad, and promoting the common good.

Their main purpose, these days, seems to be supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama.

I have to say that I’m very disappointed with Brian McLaren’s participation in this ad. I’m a big fan of McLaren and find his work to be very helpful. We probably agree more than we disagree on most theological issues, and we probably disagree more than we agree on most political issues. With that said, I have a great deal of respect for McLaren.

However, I think it’s incredibly inappropriate for McLaren to come out and support a political candidate — any political candidate — like this.

I have no problem with people of faith, Christian or otherwise, being involved in politics. In fact, I think it’s part of the calling of a follower of Jesus to care about government and to be involved in electing good leaders. My problem has always been when religious people, especially religious leaders, find themselves so enamoured with a politician that they allow themselves to be used for political gains, even when those political gains seem completely virtuous.

This is the problem that’s plagued the so-called religious right for the past three decades. Men like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Dobson, and many others confused the agenda of Jesus with the agenda of the Republican Party. Make no mistake, political parties exist for one purpose — to acquire and maintain power. They may do so in the name of justice, equality, civic virtue, etc., but ultimately, in the mind of the politician, the way to achieve change in society is through the ballot box.

I’d argue that Jesus had a different agenda. Jesus came to establish God’s kingdom on earth, and he didn’t need a political party to nominate him or voters to elect him. His followers didn’t get together a write a party platform. They lived out their agenda through the power of the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ known as the church.

Again, that’s not to say that governments and the political process don’t have some role to play in furthering God’s kingdom. I think God wants righteous leaders to be in power, and those leaders certainly have the power to effect change. But when leaders begin to confuse their obligations to God with their obligations to the state, it’s a recipe for trouble. There are separate agendas at work. The role of the church ought to be speaking truth to power, which becomes increasingly difficult when your relationships with power affect your ability to speak truth.

We’ve seen it happen with the religious right. Religious leaders have leveraged issues like abortion and gay rights to acquire a seat at the table in the powerful circles in Washington. Rather than actually making good policy, these religious leaders have instead made names for themselves. They get invited into the halls of power and are given the feeling that they have influence. At the same time, politicians have used these relationships to get elected and stay in office. It’s very convenient for politicians who need votes to tap into the power of the Focus on the Family mailing lists or the Christian Broadcasting Network’s audience. Meanwhile, the Kingdom agenda gets lost in this mutually beneficial relationship.

My hope would be that Brian McLaren would be wise enough to understand that, while he admires Barack Obama, he shouldn’t let that admiration cloud his commitment to the ultimate pursuit of Jesus’ agenda.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the facade of Joel Osteen’s prosperity gospel would begin to crumble. It’s clear to me that he’s all sizzle and no steak. At some point, all the sugary sweet, “Jesus wants you to be rich and happy,” talk was going to come back to bite him. From Barbara Ehrenreich’s blog:

In the theology of Christian positive thinking, “everything happens for a reason.” The Osteens may conclude that the divine intention was to prod them into to emulating Joyce Meyers and Creflo Dollar by investing in a private jet. But there’s another possible message from on high: that this brand of Christianity fosters a distinctly un-Christian narcissism.